


Name the Girl

by Winterling42



Series: Flesh and Blood and Dust [6]
Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman, Mad Max Series (Movies), The Orphan's Tales: In the Night Garden
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Gen, allusion to another actual book, daemon AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-29
Updated: 2015-12-29
Packaged: 2018-05-10 03:41:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5569513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Winterling42/pseuds/Winterling42
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>the Dag lost her name a long time ago.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Name the Girl

**Author's Note:**

> This is definitely not the only back story I have for the Dag, and isn't even the first, chronologically. But it is finished, unlike the other stories, and stands on its own really well. So have at it!

The Dag lost her name a long time ago. She is not quite certain, now, if she ever hadone. She knows that there was a name her Teacher called her, and a name that she gave to outsiders who visited the broken oasis that her clan defended. But neither she nor her daemon can remember what it was, only that it did not suit her very well. It was an old, old name, one that meant important things to old, old people. She preferred the names from her stories. She called herself _Lilith_ for a few turns of the moon, and then _Eve_ , and then _Hannah_. Pheona decided none of them were meant for her. 

She called herself _Aerie_ , after an old witch. She called herself _Oasis,_ and then _Leandra._ The words did not sit right across her shoulders, did not fill her up with some abstract feeling of being named. She called herself _Flippant,_ and _Alley_ , and _Orbit,_ but none of those were hers, not in the way a name ought to belong to someone. 

When the War Boys came, with Joe himself furious and deadly at their front, she slipped on the role of a snake star and called herself _Zmeya._ The name annoyed Joe, but he took her anyway, and burned the broken oasis to black, oily dust. He would not call her any name, but then, he didn’t see her need for one. It was his needs he was concerned about, his seed, and the Dag was ripped from her world of water and green and thrust into a gilded prison. 

She never called herself the Dag, not really. It was Cheedo who called her that, with a little golden compass tucked into her child’s hands. It was not a name, after all, just a word. Something her Teacher had called her, more than once. She thought it was a mis-translation on Cheedo’s part, a stand-in for a name the girl couldn’t pronounce. And she resisted it for a while, hissed at everyone who used it but refused to give them some other name to call her by. _Zmeya_ was not a name to be used among her fellow Wives; the snake star had been always alone, but for her husband and her star-lit children. 

So she was the Dag to them, and the name that wasn’t a name washed against her like waves against a cliff, until Pheona curled up next to her one night to whisper, “Haven’t you heard the truth of it yet? We don’t have a name. Or at least, no name that others use. So why _not_ be the Dag, the strange, the wild one?”

“Because that would be like giving in.”

“Giving in to what? Is it the girl’s truth you are afraid of, or the alethiometer’s?”

The Dag thought about that one for a long time, reaching up to run her hand through Pheona’s rough fur. “Both,” she said at last, because Cheedo looked at her with wide, dark eyes and didn’t even know what strength lay in her bones. Because the golden compass, with its ever-moving needles and its strange sigils, called to her like nothing else. 

“Accept it now or tomorrow, the answer is the same. And she knows it. You are the Dag.” Pheona shrugged, a peculiar gesture on her four-legged body, and put her nose under her tail to sleep. That, so far as she was concerned, ended that. 


End file.
